THROUGH MUD TO KIRIND
A city of starving cave-dwellers--An American woman's mission to the
wild--A sect of salamanders--Profiteering among the Persians--A
callous nation--Wireless orders to sit tight--Awaiting attack--The
"mountain tiger."
Next day we set out for Kirind, about fifteen miles from Surkhidizeh,
where a platoon of the Hants held an advanced post. After passing
Sar Mil and its ruined fort, we dipped down into a valley bordered by
high hills, where grew dwarf oaks, with a background of mountains
whose snow-topped peaks glistened in the warm spring sunshine.
Our way lay over a black cotton-soil plain, and the road looked as if
it had recently been furrowed by a giant plough. It was hard going
for the Ford cars, and our difficulties were increased when rain
presently overtook us. Half an hour's downpour will convert any
Persian road into a morass, and that between Surkhidizeh and Kirind
is no exception to the rule. The Fords for once were baffled. The
leading car could get no grip on the slippery soil; its front wheels
revolved aimlessly, then by a mighty exertion moved forward a few
yards, only to come to an abrupt stop, up to its front axle in a
slimy {83} mud-hole. We temporarily jettisoned everything, and
pulled it out with a tow rope and the united efforts of a dozen
friendly natives who were not averse from a little physical labour
for a pecuniary reward. There was no getting rid of the glutinous
mud. It adhered to one's boots and clung to one's garments with a
persistency that was irritating and ruinous to the temper. The
fifteen miles' journey occupied four hours, and we were "bogged"
seven times before the cars finally got clear and gained the roughly
paved causeway which, skirting Kirind village, led to the British
military post.
[Illustration: TYPICAL PERSIAN VILLAGE.]
Kirind itself is a straggling and typical group of Persian
mud-houses. It clings haphazardly to both sides of a steep, narrow
gorge, closed at one end by a perpendicular wall of jagged limestone
rock, which rises sheer for a thousand feet. Beneath this frowning
rock-barrier nestles a village abominably and indescribably filthy,
inhabitated by an elf-like people in whom months of semi-starvation
had bred something of the sullen ferocity of a pack of famishing
wolves. There was in their eyes the glint of the hunted wild animal.
They fled at our approach--men, women, and children--diving into
dark, noisome, underground dens which exhaled a horrible effluvium,
or else bolting like so many scared wild-cats for some lair high up
amongst the limestone ridges. Some of the fugitives whom we rounded
up and spoke to compassionately answered with a terrified snarl, as
if dreading we should do them injury. Yet it {84} was chiefly the
Turk, that zealous propagandist of the tenets of Islam, whose
rapacity and cruelty had driven this fellow Moslem race to the
borderland of primitive savagery.
Amid all the horror and misery of this desert of human despair we
found a Christian angel of pity, isolated, working single-handed,
striving to alleviate the terrible lot of the starving people. The
angel was an American woman, Miss Cowden, of the Presbyterian
Mission. Years before she had given up home, country, and friends in
obedience to a higher call, and was devoting her life and her
energies to the betterment of the temporal lot of the unhappy,
underfed, Persian children. She had learned their language, and
moved from village to village alone and unattended, carrying out her
great work of charity, and content to live in some dirty hovel. A
vocation surely demanding sublime self-abnegation, and calling, I
should think, for the highest attributes of faith and courage! I
hold no brief for foreign missionaries in general. I know that their
proselytizing methods have been the subject of severe criticism in
the public press and on the lecture platform. All the more reason,
therefore, why I should tell of a work which is being done so
unobtrusively, without hope of earthly recompense, and well beyond
the range of the most powerful "Big Bertha" of the cinema world.
The Kirindis for the most part belong to the curious religious sect
called Aliullahis, about {85} whose beliefs and rites many strange
legends circulate.
One of these concerns their immunity from injury by fire, and recalls
the "fire walkers" of the Tongan Islands. Aliullahian devotees, it
is said, will enter a kind of oven and stay there while fire is
heaped around it, making it red-hot. Then, covering their heads with
the burning cinders, they cry, "I am cold," and pass out unhurt.
Another ceremony consists in lifting bars of red-hot iron out of the
fire with their bare hands, their skin showing no signs of burning.
Their religion seems to be a strange mixture of Mohammedanism and
Judaism, with doctrines from various other esoteric faiths grafted on
to it. Thus they number amongst their prophets Benjamin, Moses,
Elia, David, and Jesus Christ, and they have also a saint of peculiar
efficacy in intercession named Ali. Some investigators into their
creed maintain that Ali and Daoud (David) are one and the same
person; others think that Ali is so high up in the spiritual
hierarchy as only to be invoked through Daoud. In any case, their
prayer before battle is, "O Daoud, we are going to war. Grant that
we overcome our enemy!" They then sacrifice some animal, usually a
sheep, which is roasted whole. The High Priest prays over the
carcass and distributes the flesh in small portions to those present.
Communion in this sacrament appears to inspire the Aliullahian with
absolute confidence in the success of any undertaking it precedes.
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Another of their beliefs is that of a successive incarnation of the
Deity in the greatest of their spiritual guides, seven of whom are
clubbed together under the name of "Haft-Tan."
When in Mohammedan cities, they outwardly conform to the tenets
taught by the Prophet of the Crescent, but secretly they continue the
practice of their own mystic rites. They bury their dead without
prayer (after keeping the unembalmed corpse six days), but turn his
head to face Kerbela, as do the Mussulmans.
They are recognizable from their long moustaches, since the Shiahs
are not allowed to have hair so long as to pass the upper lip.
Some authorities proclaim them the remnant of the Samaritans who, as
related in 2 Kings xvii. 6 and 7, were carried into captivity by
Hoshea, King of Assyria; and Rawlinson, in his writings on Persia,
speaks of a rock-tomb which they regard as a place of special
sanctity. They call it, he says, Dukka-ni-Daoud (David's shop),
because they believe that the Jewish monarch was a smith by trade.
We stayed two nights in Kirind village. Our quarters were a couple
of rooms above a stable which sheltered a sundry collection of goats,
sheep, two consumptive donkeys and their charvadars, some stray hens,
and two or three pariah dogs. Crossing a dirty courtyard, where
filth had accumulated for years, we climbed a broken stairway, and
were at home. The flat roof of the stable was our promenade; {87}
but, since it was full of holes, which were generally concealed by a
thin layer of sun-dried mud, great caution was needed to prevent a
sudden and undignified descent into the menagerie below. Our rooms
opened on to the roof of the stable. We slept on the floor, and, as
it was cold, our Persian servant bought some green wood and made a
fire in the only fireplace available, which consisted of a small
cavity in the mud floor. A hole in the upper roof supplied
ventilation, and served the purposes of a chimney.
It was here that the Governor paid an official call upon General
Byron. He sent a servant to announce his coming, and presently
arrived accompanied by a retinue of unkempt, hungry-looking
officials, all wearing the chocolate-coloured sugar-loaf hat peculiar
to Persians. The Governor himself was a fat, pompous individual,
with a drooping moustache, unshaven face, and no collar. We wondered
at first whether the stubble on his chin was due to slothfulness, or
was a sign of mourning. We discovered it was the latter, a brother
of his having died recently through over-participation in food at
some local festivity. To look at the portly form of the Governor
made it quite evident that everybody was not going hungry in Kirind.
As he sat cross-legged on the floor, his fingers interlaced in front
of his breast, and twirling his thumbs, he looked exactly what he
was--the personification of hopeless incapacity and lethargy. "What
ashes are fallen on my head!" he moaned aloud, by way of expressing
sorrow for the {88} death of so many of the villagers from
starvation. Yet he himself had done nothing to lessen the ravages of
famine in the district, and was content to see the wretched
inhabitants die, without moving a finger to help them.
His attitude was typical of officialdom throughout this starving
land. The Governor was a landowner, and probably, like others of his
class whom I came across later in Kermanshah and Hamadan, had plenty
of grain hidden away waiting for the day when the British
Commissariat, in order to feed starving Persians, would come and buy
it at inflated prices, thus enriching a gang of hoarding, avaricious
rascals.
When General Byron spoke of what the British were doing elsewhere in
the way of feeding the famine-stricken, the Governor's eyes
brightened, and scenting the possibility of an advantageous
commercial deal in cornered wheat, he replied with a fervent
"Mash-allah!" (Praise be to God!) The suggestion that thieving local
bakers who had been profiteering at the expense of the starving
population might be taught a salutary lesson by having their ears
nailed to their bakehouse doors, or otherwise dealt with under some
equally benign Persian enactment, seemed to find favour in the eyes
of the Governor, for he answered, "Inshallah!" (Please God!)
This Governor, who had so suddenly developed a keen interest in the
local food problem, was afterwards present at a full-dress parade of
Miss Cowden's {89} starvelings. The recipients of mission charity
were of both sexes, and varied from toddlers of three to their elders
of ten or twelve years. All they had in the way of clothing was a
piece of discoloured rag, or a section of a tattered gunny bag,
fastened round the loins. Physical suffering long endured was
indelibly stamped on their shrunken features and on their emaciated
frames. Each was given a substantial chunk of freshly baked
chipattee, or unleavened bread, and they were desired to eat it then
and there to prevent its being pilfered from their feeble hands by
hungry adult prowlers outside the mission buildings. They made no
demur, and ate ravenously. Bread is the staple diet, and generally
the only article of food, of the Persian poor; and this daily free
distribution must have been the means of preserving the lives of many
hundreds of Kirind children. Charity in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of
the word seems to find no home in the breast of the average Persian;
and each day there was a fight between local cupidity, as represented
by the Kirind bakers, and foreign generosity as exemplified by the
American Mission, which was spending its funds freely in order that
these unhappy children of an alien race might have bread and live.
Here, as elsewhere during my wanderings through Iran, I was painfully
impressed by the appalling callousness and indifference exhibited by
the ordinary Persian towards the sufferings of his own people. He
would not lift a hand to help a dying man, and dead, would leave {90}
him to the tender mercies of the dogs and vultures rather than
trouble to give him burial.
One morning, while preparing for a further move eastward towards
Kermanshah, a wireless message, transmitted in haste from
Surkhidizeh, ordered us to sit tight and await developments and
reinforcements. We were warned that the Senjabis were restless, and
might any night swoop down on our slenderly-garrisoned post. Ali
Akhbar Khan, who was the Pendragon of the Senjabis and various stray
allied bands of nomadic robbers in these parts, was said to be
watching us from his eyrie up in the snow-capped hills. His martial
ardour had been stimulated to the verge of action by German gold and
German rifles, and the promise of much loot when our weak force had
been duly annihilated. To the careful, calculating Akhbar, and to
the wild tribesmen who had flocked to his standard at the very first
mention of the word "unlimited loot," the capture of the Kirind post
must have seemed the softest of soft things. To look our way and
resist temptation was like flying in the face of Providence. How
that dear old bandit's mouth must have watered in anticipation of
securing a fine haul of rifles, ammunition, and transport animals!
All that stood between Akhbar Khan and the realization of his project
was a platoon of the 14th Hants under Lieutenant Gow, a Lewis gun, a
dozen Persian irregulars of doubtful fighting quality, and a very
unformidable barrier of two rows of {91} barbed wire. The camp was
on the edge of a narrow plateau facing the road. In the rear, where
this latter became merged in the hills, the smooth slope was like a
toboggan run, and the alert Senjabis, if they so wished, might have
slid from their hill-top sangars down on to the field of battle. But
they held aloof; their day was not yet.
We spent an anxious night. Everybody was under arms waiting for the
threatened attack. Morning ended our period of suspense and brought
the looked-for reinforcements--a squadron of the 14th Hussars under
Captain Pope, a couple of guns, an additional platoon of the Hants,
as well as the Dunsterville contingent which had originally set out
from Baqubah.
The "mountain tiger," as Ali Akhbar Khan was called in the
imaginative and picturesque vocabulary of the district, had
hesitated, and missed his chance. The reinforcing party was very
much disappointed at Akhbar's display of irresolution and his
reluctance to fight. Some amongst the bolder spirits contemplated
calling upon him in his mountain lair. But that was not to be. When
the "tiger" did spring later on, and sought to cut up a British
column, he received the lesson of his life. But our party was not
there to share in the glory of his undoing.
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